Young women are asking for (and getting) more pay than men

Women are likely to be paid less than men hired for the exact same role. Unless, that is, they're recent college grads, a new study shows.

Women in technology, sales or marketing with two years' or less experience actually got salary offers that were 7% higher than those received by equally inexperienced men, according to the jobs site Hired.

Why are the youngest female workers earning more than men? It could be in part because they're asking for it. Those junior women asked for 2% more in compensation than their male counterparts.

That's a surprising fact when you consider that most women typically asked for less up front -- about $14,000 less on average than a man applying for the same post, the study found.

And the more experience a woman has in a field, the less she's likely to ask for relative to a man with comparable experience.

Overall, women hired for jobs in technology, sales and marking were offered salaries that were 3% less than what men were offered, but at some companies the gender pay gap was as high as 30%, the study showed.

Men received higher salary offers for the same job title at the same company 69% of the time.

"It's difficult to determine whether this is a symptom of unconscious gender bias in the hiring process or results from an ongoing cycle of women being underpaid, setting their salary expectations too low, and ultimately receiving less in subsequent roles," data scientist Jessica Kirkpatrick, the report's author, noted.